Young, Ill and Uninsured
hippiemom
Posts: 3,326
By BOB HERBERT
Published: May 19, 2007
The New York Times
Fourteen-year-old Devante Johnson deserved better. He was a sweet kid, an honor student and athlete who should be enjoying music and sports and skylarking with his friends at school. Instead he’s buried in Houston’s Paradise North Cemetery.
Devante died of kidney cancer in March. His mother, Tamika Scott, believes he would still be alive if bureaucrats in Texas hadn’t fouled up so badly that his health coverage was allowed to lapse and his cancer treatment had to be interrupted.
Ms. Scott, who has multiple sclerosis, understood the grave danger her son would be in if he were somehow to be left without the Medicaid coverage that paid for his chemotherapy, radiation and other treatment. She submitted the required paperwork to renew the coverage two months before the deadline.
“I was so anxious to get it processed,” she said, “so we wouldn’t have a lapse of coverage.”
In Texas, as in many other states, there is a concerted effort to undermine programs that bring government-sponsored health care to poor and working-class children. It is not an environment in which bureaucrats are encouraged to be helpful, not even when lives are at stake.
“They kept losing the paperwork,” Ms. Scott told me, her voice quivering with grief. She submitted new applications, made dozens of phone calls and sent off a blizzard of faxes. Despite her frantic efforts, the coverage was dropped.
When the coverage lapsed, the treatment Devante had been receiving ceased. “They put us on clinical trials,” Ms. Scott said. “They changed his medicine, and he started getting sicker and sicker. After awhile it was like his body was so frail and he was so weak he could barely walk on his own.”
Four months after the Medicaid coverage lapsed, the mistakes were finally corrected and the coverage was reinstated. By then, there was no chance to save Devante.
“I believe he would be with me now if they hadn’t let his insurance lapse,” said Ms. Scott.
Across America children by the millions are being denied the health care they need and deserve — and some are dying — because the U.S. has no coherent system of health coverage for children.
Stories like Devante Johnson’s are not unusual. Three months ago a homeless seventh grader in Prince George’s County, Maryland, died because his mother could not find a dentist who would do an $80 tooth extraction. Deamonte Driver, 12, eventually was given medicine at a hospital emergency room for headaches, sinusitis and a dental abscess.
The child was sent home, but his distress only grew. It turned out that bacteria from the abscessed tooth had spread to his brain. A pair of operations and eight subsequent weeks of treatment, which cost more than a quarter of a million dollars, could not save him. He died on Feb. 25.
There’s a presidential election under way and one of the key issues should be how to provide comprehensive health coverage for all of the nation’s children, which would be the logical next step on the road to coverage for everyone.
That an American child could die because his mother couldn’t afford to have a diseased tooth extracted sounds like a horror story from some rural outpost in the Great Depression. It’s the kind of gruesomely tragic absurdity you’d expect from Faulkner. But these things are happening now.
“People don’t understand the amount of time and stress parents are going through as they try to get their children the coverage they need, in many cases just to stay alive,” said Marian Wright Edelman, president of the Children’s Defense Fund and a tireless advocate of expanding health coverage to the millions of American children who are uninsured or underinsured.
Medicaid and the State Children’s Health Insurance Program provide crucially important coverage, but the eligibility requirements can be daunting, budget constraints in many jurisdictions have led to tragic reductions in coverage, and millions of youngsters simply fall through the cracks in the system, receiving no coverage at all.
It is time for all that to end. American children should be guaranteed nothing less than comprehensive health coverage from birth through age 18. This can be achieved if an effort is mounted that is comparable to that which led to the first moon shot, or the Marshall Plan, or the postwar G.I. bill.
Keeping American children alive and healthy should be at least as important as any of those worthy projects.
http://select.nytimes.com/2007/05/19/opinion/19herbert.html?_r=1&oref=login
Published: May 19, 2007
The New York Times
Fourteen-year-old Devante Johnson deserved better. He was a sweet kid, an honor student and athlete who should be enjoying music and sports and skylarking with his friends at school. Instead he’s buried in Houston’s Paradise North Cemetery.
Devante died of kidney cancer in March. His mother, Tamika Scott, believes he would still be alive if bureaucrats in Texas hadn’t fouled up so badly that his health coverage was allowed to lapse and his cancer treatment had to be interrupted.
Ms. Scott, who has multiple sclerosis, understood the grave danger her son would be in if he were somehow to be left without the Medicaid coverage that paid for his chemotherapy, radiation and other treatment. She submitted the required paperwork to renew the coverage two months before the deadline.
“I was so anxious to get it processed,” she said, “so we wouldn’t have a lapse of coverage.”
In Texas, as in many other states, there is a concerted effort to undermine programs that bring government-sponsored health care to poor and working-class children. It is not an environment in which bureaucrats are encouraged to be helpful, not even when lives are at stake.
“They kept losing the paperwork,” Ms. Scott told me, her voice quivering with grief. She submitted new applications, made dozens of phone calls and sent off a blizzard of faxes. Despite her frantic efforts, the coverage was dropped.
When the coverage lapsed, the treatment Devante had been receiving ceased. “They put us on clinical trials,” Ms. Scott said. “They changed his medicine, and he started getting sicker and sicker. After awhile it was like his body was so frail and he was so weak he could barely walk on his own.”
Four months after the Medicaid coverage lapsed, the mistakes were finally corrected and the coverage was reinstated. By then, there was no chance to save Devante.
“I believe he would be with me now if they hadn’t let his insurance lapse,” said Ms. Scott.
Across America children by the millions are being denied the health care they need and deserve — and some are dying — because the U.S. has no coherent system of health coverage for children.
Stories like Devante Johnson’s are not unusual. Three months ago a homeless seventh grader in Prince George’s County, Maryland, died because his mother could not find a dentist who would do an $80 tooth extraction. Deamonte Driver, 12, eventually was given medicine at a hospital emergency room for headaches, sinusitis and a dental abscess.
The child was sent home, but his distress only grew. It turned out that bacteria from the abscessed tooth had spread to his brain. A pair of operations and eight subsequent weeks of treatment, which cost more than a quarter of a million dollars, could not save him. He died on Feb. 25.
There’s a presidential election under way and one of the key issues should be how to provide comprehensive health coverage for all of the nation’s children, which would be the logical next step on the road to coverage for everyone.
That an American child could die because his mother couldn’t afford to have a diseased tooth extracted sounds like a horror story from some rural outpost in the Great Depression. It’s the kind of gruesomely tragic absurdity you’d expect from Faulkner. But these things are happening now.
“People don’t understand the amount of time and stress parents are going through as they try to get their children the coverage they need, in many cases just to stay alive,” said Marian Wright Edelman, president of the Children’s Defense Fund and a tireless advocate of expanding health coverage to the millions of American children who are uninsured or underinsured.
Medicaid and the State Children’s Health Insurance Program provide crucially important coverage, but the eligibility requirements can be daunting, budget constraints in many jurisdictions have led to tragic reductions in coverage, and millions of youngsters simply fall through the cracks in the system, receiving no coverage at all.
It is time for all that to end. American children should be guaranteed nothing less than comprehensive health coverage from birth through age 18. This can be achieved if an effort is mounted that is comparable to that which led to the first moon shot, or the Marshall Plan, or the postwar G.I. bill.
Keeping American children alive and healthy should be at least as important as any of those worthy projects.
http://select.nytimes.com/2007/05/19/opinion/19herbert.html?_r=1&oref=login
"Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity." ~ MLK, 1963
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...are those who've helped us.
Right 'round the corner could be bigger than ourselves.
True competition and no price fixing - which should lead to lower costs.
Health insurance eliminates competition and sets prices high. And it needs the prices to be VERY high because that guarantees that people need health insurance.
I'd probably make it a lot tougher to sue for malpractice as well.
...are those who've helped us.
Right 'round the corner could be bigger than ourselves.
An interesting concept. Not something I would support, but I'd like to hear more about this idea. Has it ever been put into practice?
was like a picture
of a sunny day
“We can complain because rose bushes have thorns, or rejoice because thorn bushes have roses.”
― Abraham Lincoln
when it hits you, you feel to pain.
So brutalize me with music.”
~ Bob Marley
This is what all big government social engineers count on.
A government which robs Peter to pay Paul, can always count on the support of Paul. – George Bernard Shaw
how do you figure? the top 1% only pays about 20% of the tax burden, so you're saying the next 4% pays the majority of taxes? even the governmental office the cbo issued a report, i think in 2004 or 05, saying the tax burden was shifted primarily to the middle class
he had a voice that was strong and loud and
i swallowed his facade cos i'm so
eager to identify with
someone above the crowd
someone who seemed to feel the same
someone prepared to lead the way
The second advantage is the larger pool of insured. The bigger the pool, the lower the average cost. And yes, I know people complain about being forced into the same pool with people that live extremely unhealthy lifestyles, but you're probably already in a pool with those people, every insurance company covers plenty of them. And face it, no one knows what their expenses will be in the future. You can take care of yourself and live a healthy lifestyle and suddenly find yourself with huge expenses. Except for when my kids were born, I never spent $500 in a year on health care in my entire life and I had no risk factors for ovarian cancer, I exercised and ate a largely organic diet, yet here I am with $300,000+ in annual expenses. Lightning can strike at any time.
As for the increased taxes, I see that only as a difference in where the money goes. My insurance already costs about $10,000 per year, so I don't particularly care if my taxes go up by as much as $10,000 ... it's the same amount of money left in my pocket at the end of the day. And there is no reason that a universal system shouldn't be cheaper. If we eliminate insurance industry profits and expenses, and the outrageous number of people employed by the health care system who do nothing but paperwork, and costs should be lowered. We should demand a system that not only increases coverage but decreases costs. This can't be accomplished overnight, but that's the direction we should be going.
health insurance is not about big goverment. big government is what we have now, with the health/pharm/insurance industry sleeping with the government.
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Socialized heath care is about big government.
Well, I guess we better come to some sort of agreement about big government. I think our modern US government, going back 100 years, maybe more, has become the caretaker of the rich. It's at the worst its ever been, today. To me, that's Big Government, in the negative.
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If you want to see a bureaucratic process at its worse, look no further than our current for profit health insurance companies.
but the illusion of knowledge.
~Daniel Boorstin
Only a life lived for others is worth living.
~Albert Einstein
"Only"???? That's awesome.
The top 1% pays about 25% of total federal taxes. The next 4% pays the next 25%. The next 5% pays the next 25%. So 75% of federal taxes are paid by 10% of the population. The remaining 25% is spread over the remaining 90% of the population with those in the bottom 50% paying little to no federal tax.
Anyway, I'm curious why the story at the begining of this thread woud lead anyone to want additional government involvement in health care. How would moving these services from the state level to the federal level prevent the examples provided? Obviously these same kinds of stories can be found in the private system as well, so what's the effective benefit found in picking your favorite bureaucracy?
Most definitely. However, that's a bureaucratic process I don't have to participate in if I don't want to. A nice difference.
But you do, obliquely in the least, unless you have your own insurance.
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It might not be this way if the health care system moved responsibly and with the health of the country and all it's people in mind. But it doesn't. It moves for profits, and for the most part, only profits, and the largest dividends possible.
In other words, there needs to be an intervention. If it is socialized health care, first, we have to ask what "socialized health care" means.
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So you are fearful that you will be 'forced' into a socialized program? ha ha
black & white, all or nothing.......what say you about a two-tiered system?
but the illusion of knowledge.
~Daniel Boorstin
Only a life lived for others is worth living.
~Albert Einstein
I do participate in the private bureaucracy. However, in the event that such a bureaucracy fails or I become completely dissatisfied with it, I don't need your permission to seperate myself from it.
For example, I get my routine medical services outside the private insurance system. I pay in cash for things like check-ups and prescription drugs. Under most socialized health care proposals, that act would be a crime.
Fearful? Not really. Expecting it sometime in the next 10-20 years? Sure.
Can you be more specific? Are you asking if I support a system where the poor get nationalized coverage, but I am still able to participate in whatever I choose (except of course, not subsidizing the nationalized system)?
Yes.
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Yeah, basically. This is a complex issue, but Americans have always been innovative in their approach to solutions. I'm not sure I see the possibility of dissolving private insurance outright in the US at this time. I will add that your taxes will go to fund the nationalized system. I realize you are not fond of this 'social contract', but you know the solution to that. The only gun to your head is your own.
but the illusion of knowledge.
~Daniel Boorstin
Only a life lived for others is worth living.
~Albert Einstein
It isn't that complex, at least not financially/tax-wise. A healthy country works harder, lives longer, puts in more than it takes.
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I'd certainly take a "two-tiered" system over one wherein me trading honestly with a doctor is considered criminal. In other words, I'll take basic coersion over complete fascism.
And it's funny that you say "I'm not sure I see the possibility of dissolving private insurance". Considering the means you're proposing applying to me, what in god's name do you think stops you from going all the way?
"Put out or get out" is a threat, baraka. And you know damn well what that threat is backed by. Deny it if you'd like.
Hehe...this is the logic that will destroy this world. The idea that a "healthy country" just magically "puts in more than it takes" is a hilarious concept inside a topic that is precisely proposing to allow people to consume more than they produce. Good luck with this.
Almost as hilarious as the concept of a nation with no taxes where everyone magically pulls together and gives their share of work/money/services to keep the infrastructure running.
Freedom is Slavery
Ignorance is Strength
Where does 'consume' come into this, for you?
I work hard. I just worked 72 hours this week. 60 the week before. I'm putting 'in' my good health, and my ability to produce. Sure, I benefit with a nice paycheck, but I don't mind that my extra energies benefit others. I might be the person who needs that Medicaid one day.
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What means am I proposing? Have you seen me commit to one 'idea' to solve this problem? You are projecting your paranoia on to me. I do know that our current system is very complex and I'm not sure out right elimination of the private industry would be wise at this point. I do not know enough to propose that we completely throw out our current system. But I do know that our system is broken and reform is needed.
Wow, I'll use that logic on my landlord. Yeah, if you break the law and squat there will be consequences. You can terminate the contact at any time, just like I can terminate my contract with my landlord. You are not a victim, ffg, so stop pretending to be one.
but the illusion of knowledge.
~Daniel Boorstin
Only a life lived for others is worth living.
~Albert Einstein
This is about your paranoia, and your belief that corruption is the rule.
all posts by ©gue_barium are protected under US copyright law and are not to be reproduced, exchanged or sold
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I've never suggested that "everyone magically pulls together and gives their share of work/money/services to keep the infrastructure running". I've suggested the opposite -- that the only way people will do this is if you force them to.
What I have suggested is that, absent forced taxation, people will speak their values with their money. That's it.